


Not Quite According to Plan

by queenbookwench



Category: Casson Family - Hilary McKay
Genre: Asexuality, Bisexuality, Coming of Age, F/F, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Kissing, Lesbian Character, Pining, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 12:04:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8890132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenbookwench/pseuds/queenbookwench
Summary: Saffron Casson and Sarah Warbeck's teenage romantic entanglements with other people and--eventually--each other.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thewordlover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thewordlover/gifts).



> This takes place in a vaguely post-Caddy Ever After future; I didn't have that book handy whilst writing, so I apologize for any inaccuracies that may have crept in, as well as any blatant Americanisms that slipped past my attempt at self-Brit-picking. I have read Rose's blog but am not following it as canon.
> 
> Angela and Rusty are very loosely inspired by the Angela and Rusty in Sarah Rees Brennan's Lynburn Legacy series, but you don't need to know it at all.
> 
> I hope you like it!

The Realisation (as Saffy thought of it) happened sometime in the middle of Year 6. After the many adventures of dating Oscar, Saffy had enjoyed breaking hearts for quite awhile, until this boy, this practically perfect boy..

Saffy’s Lov-ah (as he was called-- _almost_ always out of earshot--by Rose) was named Trevor Adamson. He managed to be both fit and kind-faced and was very fond of animals. He was a distant relative of _those_ Adamsons who’d written all the books about releasing lions into the wild in Kenya, which Caddy thought especially wonderful. He had gelled, spiky brown hair and soft brown eyes rather like a retriever’s; the Casson family as a whole liked him, which certainly made Saffy’s life easier--his desire to go to drama school after secondary was not the impediment it would have been with some families.

And yet, Saffy didn’t enjoy kissing him as much as she thought she ought to.

With the boys she’d kissed before, it had been easy enough to put the lacklusterness of the whole kissing experience down to their ignorance (and-- she reluctantly admitted-- her own). Trevor, on the other hand, was not only an attentive boyfriend but technically speaking quite good at kissing.

Clearly the problem was with her, and just as clearly, this state of affairs could not go on. Breaking up with him wasn’t fun at all, but she did it resolutely; she truly didn’t mind (well, only a little) when he started dating a girl called Pippa a few weeks later, who was playing Rosalind in the fall production of  _As You Like It._

The penny dropped the rest of the way when Ingrid Sandstrom joined her class during winter term; Ingrid was an exchange student from Sweden who was staying with Rose’s friend Kiran’s family, and naturally everyone in Year 6 was either madly curious about her or pretending they weren’t.

Saffy fell into the latter camp. And despite her pretense of utter indifference, she felt a curious flutter whenever Ingrid would reach up to tie back her long blonde hair, and on the football field,  Saffyfound herself distracted by the the graceful way Ingrid shifted the ball down toward the goal. She, Saffron Casson, was if nothing else decidedly in lust.

Little things from the past seemed to fall into place; the way she’d devoured the copy of _Annie on My Mind_ that Sarah had bought on her family trip to New York two years ago because she’d heard it was scandalous; her intense admiration for Gillian Anderson’s perfect cheekbones during late night _X-Files_ marathons at Sarah’s.

She held this knowledge quietly to herself for awhile, then tentatively began with the easiest possible audience--her brother Indigo. Perched on the windowsill and periodically kicking the back of Indigo’s chair to distract him from his revision (and resolutely ignoring her own), she said,  “Indigo, I’ve had a Realisation this week.” If Indigo were a different sort of person, he might have told her to bog off, but Indigo was still capable of denying his pack of sisters very little if anything.

“Oh? Out with it then, I’m all ears," he said,as he turned round to face her. “I’m pretty sure I fancy girls as well as boys. Honestly, I think I fancy girls more."

“Is that why you broke it off with Perfect Trevor?” he asked.

“I didn’t know it then but yeah--it was.”

“D'you fancy Sarah then?”

“Really Indigo! I thought better of you--straight people are always assuming that bi girls and lesbians must fancy all their girl friends--friends who are girls I mean. Sarah’s my best friend and that’s completely different!"

“I never seem to fancy anyone much, so I wouldn’t know.”

“Eh, you’re a late bloomer is all.”

“That’s what _everyone_ says! I’d hoped you’d have something more interesting to contribute," he replied, a bit stung.

“Well, you’re quite the most most mature of all of us in every other way. I wouldn’t worry about it," Saffron responded, which seemed to settle things.

She stared at the cracks in the ceiling for a few minutes while Indigo started to revise again. “I have got to tell her though. It’s not the sort of thing you can keep secret from your best friend. You don’t think she’ll be...weird about it, do you?”

Indigo got up and wrapped an arm loosely around Saffy’s shoulders. “If Sarah were the sort of person who got weird about unexpected things, do you _really_ think you two would still be friends?”

Saffy thought about how she and Sarah had met and about their many minor adventures and misadventures since.

“All right, you might have a point there, Indigo.” she said.

“I _am_ the sensible one.” he said, at which point Saffron felt herself duty bound to tackle him and muss up some of that sensibleness.

Still she couldn't help turning it over and over in her mind--she didn't think Sarah would be offended if Saffron did fancy her but maybe she’d be offended that she _didn't_?

 

The next afternoon, starfished out next to Sarah on Sarah’s bed, Saffy spilled it out. She held her breath for a moment, but Sarah just grinned. “Well, all right then; more tasty boys for me I guess. So what’s your plan for getting the girl?”

“What makes you think there’s a girl?”

“I have actually met you, Saffy. Of course there’s a girl. Oh bollocks, you don’t have a plan, do you? This is why you need me…”

The Plan (capital letters strongly implied by Sarah) as eventually concocted involved complimenting Ingrid’s taste in both music and shoes and asking leading questions about women’s footie players, among other strategems. Said Plan culminated with one of the youth club dance nights, which weren’t either Saffy or Sarah’s usual thing--Saffy because of the combination of loud music and loads of people she didn’t know well; Sarah because dances seemed to be one of those situations where abled sorts reacted to her chair with the combination of awkwardness and pity that she most loathed.

But standing beneath a disco ball with a slightly contraband can of lager in one’s hand was generally considered a good position for flirting, and Saffy had heard that most of the girls’ football team was planning to be there.

The evening was a mixed success--Saffy successfully maneuvered Ingrid into one of the dimmer corners while the other football girls giggled and bounced around. They leaned closer and closer, until they more or less fell onto each others’ lips.

Ingrid’s lipstick tasted like peaches. Saffy told her so rather dreamily.

"You taste like lager," Ingrid giggled.

Meanwhile Marcus Thompson, a tall black boy in year 7 who was known as a keen dancer, saw Sarah and swung her out onto the floor as soon as she’d nodded her approval.

“This chair looks ace--is it a racer?” he asked.

She said, only a little breathlessly, that it was.

“I bet we could do some pretty good moves,” he replied.

“That’s what I like to hear.” Sarah said. “Let’s do it.”

He took her hand and they moved smoothly together and apart, just as if they both did that sort of thing every day. _Well, Marcus probably did,_ Sarah thought,a little dizzily. She wondered who he'd known that used a wheelchair, to be able to move with her so easily, then decided it didn't matter. People turned to watch and for once it wasn’t awkward--it felt appreciative.

Both parted with a sense of possibility--but at school on Monday, Ingrid made clear to Saffy that while she might kiss girls when she’d been drinking, that didn’t mean she was interesting in “going lesbo” while sober. Saffy ignored her as haughtily and ostentatiously as possible for the rest of the term.

 Marcus, on the other hand, quite surprised Sarah by calling her up for another date. They began to spend quite a few evenings out at dances and Saffy tried not to feel left out; she _knew_ she was being unfair--Sarah had been good about Trevor, after all, but her emotions went right on feeling lonely anyhow.

Sarah and Marcus lasted until Marcus left for his gap year working at an orphanage in Jamaica, parting on bittersweet but friendly terms. After that, there was a brief fling with Bradley the Berk--whose car was later mysteriously covered in shaving cream after he was heard to describe Sarah to his friends as “pretty enough for a girl in a wheelchair”--and Colin the Artist, who rather grandly called Sarah his muse and did several quite lovely paintings and sketches of her (including some near-nudes which caused quite a row when her mum saw them) until she got fed up with being “put on a bloody artistic pedestal" and broke it off with him.

Saffy, alas, found the rest of year 6 rather a romantic wasteland; she went out on dates with boys, hoping she might feel that shivery flutter with one of them, but she never did.

 

This drought lasted until the next summer when they worked as summer camp counselors on a youth internship scheme--Sarah teaching arts & crafts while Saffy led excursions. The pool where she took her Hideous Urchins was run by a blonde, gorgeous and tyrannical head lifeguard called Angela. She rode herd on the kids and mercilessly told off any boy who tried to flirt with her, which Saffy found...intriguing.

One day Saffy (mostly) accidentally whacked her with a pool noodle.

“Watch where you’re going, you utter barbarian!” Angela rolled her eyes but didn’t seem truly cross.

“Well, excuse me your highness,” Saffy snapped back.

"Just watch where you're going next time," Angela said, her tone seemingly bored. But she smiled a little and tossed her hair as she climbed back up into that frightfully imperial lifeguard's perch, which (as Saffy observed) was far more encouragement than any boy had gotten all summer.

The flirtation was on then, carrying them through the summer as snarking turned into joking, which turned into shared ice creams and eventually shared kisses.

As it emerged, Saffy and Angela together functioned rather like a double version of the rhyme about the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead--when they were good they were very very good and when they were bad they were horrid.  Saffy alternated between floating on cloud nine and ranting furiously, and Sarah did her best to be supportive.

Unfortunately, Sarah loathed Angela--guiltily. She ought to be pleased that Saffy had found someone, and it wasn’t as if Saffy and Angela were a terrible match personality-wise.  And Angela was friendly enough with Sarah (by relative Angela-standards).

“You’re really fit,” she’d said without preamble when they'd met. “You should meet my brother Rusty.”

Rusty had turned out to be a uni student with a burgeoning self-defence business; they’d been mutually uninterested in flirting when they did meet, but he’d been intrigued by the challenge of self-defence in a wheelchair and asked if she’d be a guinea pig for an adaptive class. She’d agreed--Rusty’s almost scientific curiosity didn’t feel objectifying; more like something playful, even fun. 

And things might have rumbled along in the usual way for quite some time, if Sarah hadn't had a Realisation of her own. The bolt hit her quite suddenly one afternoon, as she looked at the light illuminating Saffy’s hair, while Saffy was flopped over top of one of Sarah’s beanbag chairs. She wanted Saffy there, just like that, for as long as she could possibly have her, didn't want to move on to some other boy.  _Oh god_ , she thought, _I am so incredibly fucked_.

As year 7 wore on and the looming prospect of university well--loomed, Sarah prodded the thought like pushing a bruise. She hadn’t thought she was into girls. She thought about kissing Saffy--did she want to? Bloody hell, she _did_.

Because of the sort of person she was, Sarah pushed that thought to the back burner and spent her time solving other people’s problems--specifically David and Indigo’s.

It was obvious to everyone who was even half-way observant (which included surprisingly few people, Sarah thought) that the former bully was gone on Indigo Casson and had been for years. This was even more hopeless than Sarah’s own feelings--Saffy was at least known to like girls, whilst Indigo continued to maintain a sublime indifference to romantic overtures from all genders.

“I’m not broken, am I?” Indigo had asked her and Saffy one afternoon, as they’d stood around in the Cassons’ kitchen while he made tea and sandwiches.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Indigo,” Saffy had said. “You’re lovely just as you are--you’re not broken.” 

Indigo did not appear convinced, and so Sarah, who firmly believed that efficiency and directness were the best reassurance, had emailed him some articles on asexuality and suggested that he have a look. She had yet to hear back and thus remained unsure whether that problem-solving attempt had been helpful or disastrous.

And while Indigo was figuring himself out, Sarah was firmly convinced that David needed to meet some nice gay boys. One afternoon, she stood on the far side of the register at the Costa where he worked and said so; it was a slow day and the coffee shop was practically empty, so she had a lot of time to make her case.

“Come on, Sarah--how’m I meant to do that?” David asked. “They’re not exactly planning to start having Gay Night down the local. And besides all the gay blokes you see on the telly and that are well artsy, you know, or into drama, and all terribly fit. Not fat and planning to go into construction.”

“So what, you’re going to live in romance-free isolation forever?” Sarah asked. “I don’t think so! Besides, I think you could make that whole 'I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay' thing work for you.”

They hatched plans to head for a rave that Sarah had heard about, in the next town over. She got 'round her mother by telling her she was going over to Saffy’s on a night she knew perfectly well Saffy would be out with Angela (or more likely watching movies at Angela’s, since Angela was a homebody).

David picked her up at the Banana House and made a spirited effort to convince Indigo to come along, even as Sarah made negating gestures--that was defeating the purpose, dammit. At the warehouse, Sarah was pleased to see that, apart from a few bits of broken pavement, it would be easy to roll right in. The music was already making the building vibrate and she could see occasional flashes of colored light through the partially-ajar door.

It never got easier really--this whole business of rolling into a brand-new place in her wheelchair. What did get easier was pretending she wasn’t fussed, so that most people--even Saffy sometimes--could be fooled into believing she honestly didn’t give a fuck. But she still did.

Which was probably the reason that, when a cheery girl with glow sticks wrapped around her arms and neck offered her a tab of Ecstasy, she took it. David gave her a dubious look and she gave him a _you’re-not-the-boss-of-me_ look right back. She slipped it onto her tongue.

At first, it was brilliant. All self-consciousness washed away, replaced by euphoria. She wheeled her chair out into the center of the dance floor as if she owned it, executing complex turns and and spins. The DJ's rhythes vibrated through her whole body and the room glowed with color and light. Everyone was beautiful and so was she.

 At some point, it started to shift. Her body shook with exhaustion and reaction rather that pulsing energy; she leaned over her the side of her chair and just managed to avoid vomiting all over the shoes of the group of girls who’d been dancing near her. “Hey,hey! You alright?” one asked.

She shook her head.

“First time?”

She nodded.

“It can wear off hard. Would it helped if I pushed you?”

Humiliatingly, Sarah realised that it _would_ help. When she got to the edge of the dance floor, she saw David lurking in the corner. He also looked a bit green.

“Drank loads of that green punch,” he said. “To give me confidence, like. Didn’t work. Wow, Sarah, you look like shit.”

“Don’t you dare say ‘’toldja so.” she slurred.

They leaned on each other in mutual misery.

“How are we gonna get home?” he asked. “Neither of us oughta drive.”

“Callin’ Saffy. ‘S got a mobile.”

Saffy answered, sounding bleary and cross. “Yeah, all right," she said. "You and David sit tight and don’t do anything else stupid until I get there.”

Saffy drove up, looking haggard and mad with worry, but she helped Sarah into the passenger seat then loaded the chair into the back next to David. 

“We’ll go back to ours, Sarah, and hopefully your mum will be none the wiser. David, are you going to be in trouble about having left your car?”

“Nah, Mum and Dad won’t mind as long as I haven’t smashed it up. I c’n take the bus over inna morning to get it.”

Curled up on the Casson family couch that night, Sarah was embarrassingly weepy  and Saffron stroked her hair patiently, no longer seeming cross.

“What ‘’bout Angela?” Sarah murmured.

“Oh sod Angela,” Saffy replied. "We had a horrid night; I think we're finally through." 

“Should be sorry bout that,” Sarah murmured indistinctly. “Might not be though. C’n I kiss you Saffy?”

“Is this the Ecstasy talking?”

“No--been thinkin’ bout it...for awhile now.”

“Fine then,” Saffy said. “If you still want to kiss me tomorrow, we’ll have a go.”  Sarah's eyelids began to droop, and she felt asleep heavily on top of Sarah, who stayed awake for a long time afterward.

As it turned out, Sarah did indeed still want to kiss her the next morning. For Saffron, it was like having the answer to a question she hadn't known she'd been asking all along. 

 

The Beginning

 


End file.
